Welcome to A11y First!

Why A11y First?

Accessibility is an important concept to consider. The web, by design, is inclusive. Unfortunately, in order to speed up development or to create visually appealing designs, the ability for all to be able to enjoy/use/access a site's function can go ignored. Not only is this practice hurtful, but it ultimately does not contribute to the end-user experience. Developers and users benefit when web elements are designed with disability in mind first.

What does A11y mean?

"In short, A11Y means 'accessibility'. A11Y is what is known as a numeronym, which is somewhat similar to an acronym. Unlike an acronym, numbers are used in place of letters to shorten the term. You may already be familiar with other numeronyms, such as 'K-9' for 'Canine' or 'W3C' for 'World Wide Web Consortium'.

There are a number of ways a numeronym can be created. In the case of translating 'accessibility' to 'A11Y', the first and last letters of 'accessibility' are preserved, replacing the remaining letters between with their sum total of 11.

One of the motivations for a numeronym is the limited space available on social media platforms for posting content. For example, on Twitter—where the character limit was 140 until November 2017—replacing the hashtag #accessibility with #a11y freed up 9 extra characters for the author to use.

Another motivation is discoverability. You can find more relevant resources, and with greater precision. Using the term 'accessibility' to search, you will find many irrelevant resources using that word in various other contexts. You may also miss resources in languages other than English. Many accessibility specialists from around the world use 'a11y' as an international technical term when speaking about their work." credit: A11y Project